Epiphany Brewing (tm)

Kettle Shopping!

rhagerbaumer — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 06:09:00 +0000

Kettle Shopping
I’ve been shopping kettles recently – actually I’m in the process of a brewery upgrade. I already have a really great kettle for boiling – a 15 gallon stainless steel Megapot. The marketing spiel on the Northern Brewer site describes it like this -
Northern Brewer’s famous Megapots are a homebrewing standard. These are high quality Stainless Steel kettles with a thick three layer bottom – an aluminum layer is sandwiched between two stainless steel layers for superior heat dissipation. This protects against scorching and hot spots when heating a mash or boiling wort. The 15 Gallon pot is 15″ tall and 19″ in diameter. Wall thickness is 1.2 mm.
It’s great. I couldn’t be happier. It’s very wide which is perfect for boiling off volume and the width makes it very stable on the burner (which is an important feature with scalding hot liquids!) It doesn’t retain heat well thought. There is too much exposed surface area. I’m looking for other options for a mashtun/lautertun application.
I looked at the Blichmann BoilerMaker™. They have a great website – lots and lots of sizing and volume information. One of the notes is “the height to diameter ratio is the ideal 1.2 to minimize boil-off and also prevent boil-overs.” Which is an interesting point, but I’m not looking for a boil kettle.
For a mashtun, my Rubbermaid “Gott” coolers have served me well for years. I have come to appreciate the height-width ratio and their ability to retain heat. This started me looking for a kettle that was taller than wide for my mashtun. The main reason I didn’t buy the BoilerMaker™ is this comment from their website… “While the clad bottoms look impressive, they add cost, but no real benefit to the brewer.” I call B.S. on that one – I know for a fact if you are adding direct heat to a kettle without a clad bottom you get hot spots and localized scorching. The tri-clad bottom is important to me.
After kettle geometry, the next important factor is the metal the kettle is made from. I won’t go into a discussion on the suitability of aluminum kettles, just suffice it to say I won’t use one. Call it a personal preference. Stainless steel resists corrosion, is passive and can be cleaned with all the caustics or oxygenated cleaners you want.
Regarding tri-clad (tri-ply) bottoms, it turns out there are several types of wafers used in different kettles – from copper to aluminum to iron core. A quick reference of “thermal conductivity” ratings (measured in Watts per Kelvin Meter) for different metals shows one of the worst heat conductors is Stainless Steel, followed closely by Carbon Steel. Copper, not surprisingly, is the best by far.

Copper: 401 W/m*K
Aluminum: 237 W/m*K
Cast Iron: 80 W/m*K
Carbon steel: 51 W/m*K
Stainless steel: 16 W/m*K

There are some ratings for stainless steel that you will see if you go shopping online. You might see a rating of 304 SS. This refers to the alloys and additives used in the steel – 304 contains 18% chromium and 8% nickel. 316 contain’s 16% chromium, 10% nickel and 2% molybdenum. The “moly” is added to help resist corrosion to chlorides. Similarly, if you see 18/8, the first number is the amount of chromium that is contained in the stainless – 18% chromium, 8% nickel. 18/10 is 18% chromium and 10% nickel. The higher the numbers, the more corrosion resistant the material.

You will also see mm, inch and gauge ratings. These all refer to the thickness. Thinner kettles heat quicker and are easier to move and clean. Thicker kettles maintain heat, distribute heat more evenly and are more durable. It’s a matter of preference and the intended application.

gauge inches mm
16 0.063 1.6002
18 0.050 1.27
20 0.038 0.9652

I’m still looking for the perfect kettle. I think the best I can do in the 50-60qt range with a tri-clad bottom is equal height/width. A word of warning – if you’re buying online, watch out for restocking fees. Vollrath wants a 25% restocking fee! And you have to pay for return shipping. It’s an unexpected hidden hazard of online shopping.

Next time – modifying kettle!

Throw Your Stir Plate Away!

rhagerbaumer — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 05:35:58 +0000

Well, perhaps throwing your stir-plate away is a bit drastic. Recycle it in an earth friendly manner. No, keep it – you might still need it someday.

I’m moving to a Lab Mixer for yeast propagation.

Read the article here.

Pump in a Box

rhagerbaumer — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 01:32:48 +0000

I’ve had a March 809 pump for some time now. I haven’t been using it because it cavitates when pumping hot water. During a KROC homebrew club meeting I over heard a guy talking about mounting his pump in a tool box. He showed me a few pictures and viola – here I am with a similar setup.

The nice features of this arrangement are – I added a 30A 2 pole on/off switch (which is upside down at the moment), a nice junction box for the wiring, a 6″ pine board for mounting the motor. I mounted the pump head before mounting the motor so I was only able to get one bolt to secure the motor mounting – if you attempt this, make sure you drill your motor mount holes in advance. When attaching the pump head to the motor I needed to buy longer 8/32 machine screws – 1/2″ worked well. To locate the spot to drill for the screws I followed another websites recommendation to put the screws in without the pump head, then put toothpaste on the screw heads and lined it up. The walls of the tool box were angled, which is not ideal, so I did have to expand the size of the holes to get be able to line them up.

Lot’s of close work getting everything mounted in a small box – but I think the results were worth it. It adds a large amount of “cool factor” to the pump and should make it much more usable.

Coffee Blend Challenge

rhagerbaumer — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 07:05:05 +0000

Smoked Tri Tip Roast

rhagerbaumer — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 06:28:20 +0000

Apparently if you haven’t been living on the west coast you are probably missing out on a popular regional food – smoked tri-tip! A friend sent a bunch of us some of his custom dry rub and challenged us to come up with a photo journal – this was my submission (I came in second place on this one).

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Child of the Poor/What Child is This

rhagerbaumer — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 05:00:34 +0000

A beautiful hymn sung during the mass for the feast of the Epiphany today – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEkdr62eVMY

Brew day from 2006

rhagerbaumer — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 02:37:28 +0000

This was one of my earlier brewdays. I was experimenting steam injection to do a step mash and using a paint mixer to oxygenate the wort. I was also using a light bulb in my fermentation chest freezer and a bucket. When I moved to glass carboys I switched to a fermwrap to heat the carboy. Reposted from BigFoamyHead.com.

Pics!

mashing in

Infusion mash

Steam Injection Step Mash

God Bless Freight and Harbor! Cheap steam cleaner.

Iodine Tincture test to check for mash conversion

Three tier gravity based sparge

Ooooh Wooow - laser drilled sparge arm!

Collecting sweet wort

Time to boil

straining out whole hops - they did their job.

Aeration with power tools and a paint mixer!

In the fermenter with a blow-off tube in sanitizer

Boulder Beer Heat Rave

rhagerbaumer — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 04:29:39 +0000

It’s been too long since I’ve updated my blog. This is a good one though – Boulder Beer had it’s second “rave” – this one during the day and featuring mostly Colorado beers.

Highlights from the Beer Score Card
Avery Brewing Company – Moloch (fantastic strong malty beer)
Blue Moon Brewing Company – Peanut Butter Ale (downright yummy!!)
Coopersmith Brewing – Chai Stout (this is always excellent)
Dillon Dam Brewery – Oktoberfest and Dunkelweiss
Estes Park Brewery – 9 hop pale ale!
Gordon Biersch Brewery – Blonde Bock
Great Divide Brewing – Year old Old Ruffian Barleywine (need I say more?)
Left Hand Brewing – St Vrain Trippel
Mountain Sun Brewing – Superkind
New Belgium Brewing Company – Tart Lychee (awesome sour beer)
ODell Brewing Company – Bourbon Stout (nice bourbon character!)
Oskar Blues – Barrel Aged Pilsner (another awesome beer!)
Pumphouse Brewery – Cherry Bomb Saison (YUM!!)
Sam Adams – Belgian Red (meh)
Trinity Brewing Company – Farmhouse Provisional (don’t remember it)

Not on the score card, but I enjoyed numerous Sierra Nevada Big Foot Barleywines! Fresh, strong and hoppy!
What was particularly cool about this event is that Boulder beer is celebrating 30 years so they had the breweries lined up by years in business.

They also opened up the brewery so there was plenty of room and snacks.

I am glad I took the bus to this event and got there a little late – this was not an event to drive away from. I’m still mad at my designated driver for bailing out on me, but it’s good to know how to use public transportation if needs be.

Seafood Paella – New Years Eve

rhagerbaumer — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 05:29:41 +0000

Paella Ingredients

Clams and Mussels on ice

Seafood Paella - finished

Close up

Presentation

Broiled Lobster Tails

Country “Chicken” fried bacon, biscuits and gravy

rhagerbaumer — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 00:50:47 +0000

The title says it all… Something to try and say you’ve done it.